Sorry if this have been asked before, i'm new here. Anywho....
What if the Bay of Pigs was sucessful? The Cuban Exiles manged to take over Cuba? Would they have had a lot of trouble beyond the beachs? What would the reactions be to the world? Any Warsaw Pact intervention later down the road?
Well, one reason some folks believe it wasn't successful was because Kennedy was a bit more unwilling than Eisenhower to use cloak and dagger stuff. And the Bay of Pigs, which was by and large fomented in the Eisenhower Administration, was very much in the "dagger" range.
Eisenhower's original plan envisioned direct strikes flown by B-52s against the beach defenses, as well as hits against the Cuban air force on the ground just prior to the attack. They were also going to provide hits with B-26s from the Alabama National Gaurd, who was the only unit still operating that particular aircraft at the time, painted up like either the Guatemalan or Nicaraguan air force (I forget which, it's been a bit since I read the book).
These would be covered by Cuban-exile flown P-51s and P-38s, all the pilots having had previous experience flying in Africa with the CIA.
Basically, when Kennedy got in he scrapped the B-52 strikes to avoid over angering the Soviets, took away the aircraft from the Cuban exiles, and moved the B-26 launching points from Alabama to Central America to avoid as much direct connection as possible.
Myself, I'd have thought that an invasion of Cuban by Cuban exiles could only have come from America, and that the Americans might as well just use everything in their arsenal. A few B-52 strikes would've done a lot, as would having air superiority over the beaches, even for a few days.